RETROGRESSIVE LEGISLATION.

While in all civilised countries where representative institutions prevail
the tendency is to move without intermission in the direction of a broadened
electoral basis, so that in several of the English colonies to-day we find
manhood suffrage, or one man one vote, or adult suffrage; and while even the
most backward of European countries are rapidly tending year by year towards
these
page: 11 conditions—we, I believe, alone
among civilised people have deliberately, during the last few years,
narrowed our basis,¹ and undone
the progressive work of the last generation.

So also while in all enlightened countries during the past sixty years public
opinion has been steadily advancing in the direction of doing away with the
lash as a punishment for minor offences, we in this country have not only,
during the last years, possessed certain individuals in our Legislative

¹ The Franchise Act, introduced and voted for unanimously by the last
Ministry, Mr. Rhodes being Premier, raised the monetary
qualification from £25 to £75 per annum.

page: 12 Councils who have striven to
introduce an Act making legal the infliction of corporal punishment for the
smallest offences towards master or mistress on the part of household or
other servants, and which, if passed would be merely a recurrence to slavery
under a new name—but this Act was voted for by three members in the last
Ministry, two of them being Englishmen, and one the Premier, Mr. Cecil
Rhodes.

Again, while in all civilised countries the tendency, as each country
advances, is to consider more and more the welfare of its labouring classes;
to remove oppressive restrictions; to
en-
endeavour
page: 13 deavour by every lawful means to
increase their wages; and to regard the labourer, not merely as a means for
increasing the wealth of other sections of the community, but to legislate
for his welfare, and to regard his happiness as
one of the pressing considerations of the State—we in this country have,
under the Glen Grey Act of last year, brought in and supported by Mr. Cecil
Rhodes and his following, an enactment which compels even the
self-supporting and industrious native to work for the white man for a
certain time every year, whether he will or no; laying himself open to
imprisonment or fine
page: 14 if he refuse, even
though his going out to labour for the white man should entail the neglect
of his own cultivated lands.

So again, with regard to land tenure; while in all progressive countries
there is a tendency to obtain and retain as large a part as possible of
lands, mines, and great public works as the property of, and to be worked
for the benefit of, the nation as a whole—we, in this country, are for ever
and completely alienating our public lands, our minerals, our precious
stones, and even our public works.

And further, not only are we alienating them within our own
page: 15 boundaries, and allowing almost without a
struggle a small band of Monopolists to gain possession and control of that
wealth which should be ours and our children's to employ for the benefit of
the nation that shall be, but we are enabling them to grasp adjacent
territories still uninhabited by the white man, so that when the mass of
civilised men shall enter into occupation there, they will find nothing of
value left for themselves in that state which, by their labour, they will
have to build up; the alien will already have set his grasp upon all that is
fair or rich. For not as in other countries has the Monopolist risen up
page: 16 among us, a growth of our own; he comes
from a foreign clime, and sweeps bare the virgin land before him like the
locust; and, like the locust, leaves nothing for his successors but the
barren earth.

While in New Zealand and other advanced colonies every legislative effort is
being made to retain the land for the people, we are quietly allowing
ourselves to be stripped bare session after session, and are confiding our
possession into the hands of the Speculator and Monopolist.

Lastly, while in enlightened countries there is a continually increasing
tendency to raise the revenue, not by taxing the
page: 17 primary necessaries of life, upon which almost
the whole income of the labouring classes is necessarily expended, but to
raise it through the taxation of luxuries, whether by means of Excise or
Import dues, we in this country find that not only are our necessaries of
life already taxed to an appalling extent,¹ but a heavy additional tax on
wheat and flour, and an almost prohibitive tax on imported meat,² is being levied upon

page: 18 us; while diamonds (forming a
monopoly of which the Prime Minister is the head) and the intoxicating
liquors, inferior in quality, so largely produced in this country, are
allowed to go untaxed.

So also in small matters.

In Australia, where the material welfare of the country largely depends on
its wool, it has been clearly seen that to allow the land to be partially
ruined by the existence of an easily eradicated disease in the stock was
scandalous and immoral; and they have legislated so successfully that in
certain Australian colonies the insect which causes the disease has
page: 19 been exterminated. It has been felt in
those countries that the man who refuses to exterminate scab in his flocks
inflicts a merciless wrong and injustice upon his fellows whose flocks his
own infect; and the Australians have, by stringent legislation, made such
conduct impossible.

It is not necessary to say that in this country all attempts to legislate in
defence of the man who endeavours to keep his flocks healthy have been
crushed or emasculated.

Many other matters will suggest themselves to every one in which our
legislation has shown this retrograde tendency. We have no time now to enter
into
page: 20 details with regard to such
measures as Haarhoff's Bill, which, as introduced, was intended to make it
culpable for any aboriginal native, whether a domestic servant, householder,
newspaper editor, or clergyman, to be found walking on pavements in our
towns; and also to make it punishable for any aboriginal native to be found
out of doors within a township after nine o'clock at night unless he or she
had been given a pass by the Magistrate or other authorised person—a Bill
which also received the support of the existing Government.

On the whole, it is evident that no impartial mind can
page: 21 look at the course of our legislation during
recent years without realising the fact that while the wheels of legislation
in other civilised and Anglo-Saxon communities are tending to propel the car
of state forwards, ours are slowly but surely running us backwards.